


En perdant son ange

by lesmisloony



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2320091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesmisloony/pseuds/lesmisloony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he lost his angel, he died. Cosette still cries herself to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	En perdant son ange

It should not still hurt.

She had cried every night for the first week after he died, and rightly so, but now even more weeks had passed and everything was the same during the day. She smiled and laughed with her new family, with her husband and her aunt and her grandfather, and most of the time she couldn't even feel the hole in her heart. Perhaps if she was still at home, still in the Rue de l'Homme Armé and the house was empty she would understand. Perhaps if she could see his big chair, empty before the cold fireplace, or perhaps if she could walk through his little house behind the one at the Rue Plumet and hear the empty ring of her footsteps and watch dust accumulate on the floor, perhaps then she would understand. But here, surrounded by smiles and love and the happiest life she had ever known, she did not always think of him.

Then night would come, and stretched out beneath the cool sheets she would remember a detail of her life that was gone now. No more of his twinkling smiles. The scar on his arm where he had been burned was underground. She could not kiss his dear old cheek. That was when she would feel the sorrow rising up in her chest and she would let the tears run into the pillow, trying to keep her ragged breaths even so that the irregular shaking of the mattress would not wake poor Marius.

One day she put on her favorite hat and, admiring it in the mirror, suddenly remembered that it was a gift from him. She had worn it every day that week, half-hoping that someone would ask about it. He had given her so many gifts. She had complained about most of them and tucked them into her closet. He had had no taste in clothes. But she loved him.

She knew that it made Marius uncomfortable. Each time she said that something reminded her of him or told a story about something droll he had done, her husband would go quiet. She knew he felt guilty. She knew he never knew what to say. Every anecdote was dealt with by an awkwardly comforting hand closing over hers or a warm, stiff arm around her shoulders.

She arranged her hair one morning in a different way and wondered what he would have thought of it.

She did not like making Marius feel uncomfortable. She tried not to speak of him, but it hurt. She knew that no one else was missing him the way that she was.

Toussaint came by one day. They met in the terrible, cold little room where he had often visited and they clung together and cried. She could remember him sitting in that chair with his feet turned toward that fire.

She was terrified that she would forget him. How had his eyes been shaped? She remembered his cheeks well. She missed kissing them, the feeling of his rough skin and the stubble beneath her lips. Every head of white hair that passed in the streets made her heart sink. It was not him. His white hair was in a box. Under dirt.

Marius's face was smooth and soft.

She was going to name one of her children Jean. Someday she and Marius would have children. She wanted to name them all Jean. She wanted them to be Jean.

She did not want children. She wanted her father. She wanted to kiss his cheeks and receive those hideous presents he had so often given her and play the piano while he dozed in the nearby armchair. She wanted all of those things. She cried herself to sleep every night.

But she was not unhappy.


End file.
